Stated and Unstated Aims of NCERT Social Science Textbooks

Karen Haydock

Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education / TIFRVN Purav Marg, Mankhurd, Mumbai 400088haydock@gmail.com , www.khaydock.com

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol L, No 17, pp 109-119 (2015)

Keywords: NCERT textbooks, aims, social science, education vs indoctrination, communist,capitalist, illustrations

Abstract

Social science textbooks are not and cannot be objective or unbiased. What is included andwhat is excluded in a textbook indicates the ideology and the aims of the textbooks, whetherthe aims are stated or unstated. The question is, which ideology? Which aims? Some excerptsfrom the present NCERT textbooks indicate unstated aims of facilitating students’conformation and integration into the present social system. This is indicated by the use - andabsence - of terms and concepts such as ‘capitalism’ in these textbooks. Apparently theunstated aim is that if capitalism remains ununderstood and unanalysed, it may not bequestioned, and students will not realise that there is any alternative to capitalism. In thepresent circumstances, what can a textbook maker who stands on the left do?

1 Introduction

Remembering what happened during their previous rule, educationists are worried about whatthe return of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre means for the future of textbooks.Will a new set of NCERT social science textbooks soon be produced, and if so, what will theybe like? Some have voiced a fear that new textbooks may not be ‘objective’. In this paper wewill examine the nature of objectivity through a few examples in social science textbookswith regard to the stated and unstated aims of education.

1.1 Is Objectivity a Valid Aim for a Social Science Textbook?

Historians such as EH Carr have argued that it is impossible for a historian to be objectivebecause, for example, “Any conception of history “consciously or unconsciously, reflects ourown position in time, and forms part of our answer to the broader question, what view do wetake of the society in which we live” (Carr 1961:2). In his book, The People’s History of theUnited States, Howard Zinn wrote along similar lines:

“[The historian cannot] ... avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is asnatural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing forpractical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose outof the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purposeof this or that particular map.

My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitablefor both cartographers and historians. But the mapmaker’s distortion is a technicalnecessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian’sdistortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world ofcontending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian meansto or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national orsexual.” (Zinn 2002:8)

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Here we will argue that what Zinn said about historians applies as well to social sciencetextbook writers. We all have our ideologies, whether we want to have them or not, andwhether we are aware of them or not. Our ideologies are indicated by our actions. It is ourcontention that social science textbooks are not and cannot be objective or unbiased. What isincluded and what is excluded in a textbook indicates the ideology and the aims of thetextbooks, whether the aims are stated or unstated. We will present evidence from the presentsocial science textbooks which indicates that the unstated aims of social science education(which differ somewhat from the stated aims) are to facilitate students’ conformation andintegration into the present social system.

We believe that in any sphere of work, including education, it is not possible to be impartialor neutral. Even for those who take a liberal/pluralist stance, a classroom is not separate fromsociety: societal inequalities exist and thus it is not possible for multiple perspectives tocompete on a level playing field (Kelly and Brandes 2001).

1.2 Historical Aims of NCERT Social Science Textbooks

Over the past few decades, NCERT social science textbooks have been revised as successivepolitical parties have come to power at the Centre. There have been both stated and unstatedaims for textbook revision.

One of the stated aims for producing the present NCERT social science textbooks (producedbetween 2006 and 2007) was that they were necessary to counter the ‘saffronised’(communal) textbooks produced in 2003 during the National Democratic Alliance (NDA)regime.

The NDA textbooks had been produced with the stated aim of replacing the older (pre-2003)social science textbooks which the NDA felt were Communist and also outdated (Mukherjeeand Mukherjee 2002). That the exercise was also part of its Hindutva agenda was largelyunstated by them, although it was widely assumed by both proponents and opponents. TheNDA textbooks were based on an (unstated) attempt to define a Hindutva ‘essence’ of thenation (Guichard 2010: 10). This ‘essence’ was an idealist essence which the proponentsbelieve exists objectively and is immediately apparent to an individual and can be perceivedby the senses (Tavera, Jalagin, and Dilley 2011).

When the NDA textbooks were published in 2003, most of the objections stated in themainstream media were that the books were ‘saffron’. There was virtually no objection voicedin the mainstream media that the NDA textbooks were anti-communist (which they were).Did communists not think that textbooks should reflect a communist perspective or leftapproach? Or did they feel they did not have the right to publicly state this opinion? Did theyfeel that voicing such opinions would be fighting a loosing battle? Or was it just that theirvoices were silenced by the mainstream media? Some leftists stated that the problem was thatthe NDA textbooks did not represent a balanced view. We wonder - what is a ‘balanced’view, and is it a worthwhile objective?

Before they were written, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti warned that the production ofthe present textbooks would be a return to the pre-NDA textbooks and an attempt “tolegitimise the communist perspective of Indian history”. In 2004 they submitted Memorandato “the Prime Minister and Minister of Human Resource Development, highlighting the gravedangers posed to national unity and collective self-esteem by the communist conspiracy toharm the motherland’s image.”

The present NCERT textbooks were produced by a variety of people with a variety ofviewpoints, but here we assert that to a great extent they are post-modern attempts to rejectnot only the Hindutva essentialism, but any sort of essentialism. The authors rejectessentialism because it reduces inherent diversity to a single crucial characteristic. The goalwas to produce ‘secular’ textbooks, in line with the Constitution which defines India as being‘secular’. The aims are stated in the National Curricular Framework (NCERT 2005) as being

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based on a subjective constructivist framework which rejects any sort of essentialism andinstead focuses on the study of the production, development, evolution and interrelations ofsocial differences and social categories:

“Seeking guidance from the Constitutional vision of India as a secular, egalitarian and pluralistic society, founded on the values of social justice and equality1, certain broad aims of education have been identified in this document. These include independence ofthought and action, sensitivity to others’ well-being and feelings, learning to respond to new situations in a flexible and creative manner, predisposition towards participation in democratic processes, and the ability to work towards and contribute to economic processes and social change.” (NCERT, 2005: vii)

1.3 Education vs Indoctrination

During the textbook controversies of 1978, Sumanta Banerjee wrote that, “In an effort tointroduce the anti-Muslim bias in a surreptitious manner, the Hindu communal lobby isstressing the need for "objectivity" and re-writing history in consonance with "the eternalvalues of life" and "Bharatiyata" (Banerjee 1978). Ironically, more recently the so-called left-liberals are stressing the need for ‘objectivity’ in order to counter communal tendencies intextbooks.

However, we believe that in any sphere of work, including education, it is not possible to beimpartial. As educationists we try to help students learn, and learning involves changingbeliefs (as well as adding and deleting beliefs). Why should we pretend that we do not carewhat beliefs students form? Whether the beliefs are about why an object floats or sinks orwhether an act in history was right or wrong, we do hope that we will succeed in convincingstudents to agree with us on certain questions. For example, is there any social science teacherwho will be happy to have students learning that slavery is acceptable? Teachers draw theirlines at different places, but they all draw lines. It depends not on whether they take sides(they inevitably do take sides), but on whose side they take.

Nevertheless, under the influence of post-modernist relativism, educationists in the USAmake statements such as:

"Many if not most authors including myself question the propriety of changing beliefs as a goal of public instruction in a democratic society. If a goal of our instruction is to change student beliefs, are we not liable to charges of indoctrination?" (Mike Smith, 2010)

This author seems to be using the word ‘beliefs’ to mean some sort of ‘personal beliefs’ or‘unjustified beliefs’. But shouldn’t education aim to help students question and explorebeliefs, look for material evidence, and find justifications for beliefs? We should teach scienceso that students will develop scientific temper, and use a scientific method to exploreproblems throughout their lives. Even with regard to changing ethical, social, and politicalbeliefs, aren’t we fooling ourselves if we deny this is a concern of education?

This quote also shows that its author has a serious misconception as to the difference betweeneducation and indoctrination. Although there is a tendency amongst some to declare thatindoctrination has occurred whenever they see that students have acquired particular sorts ofbeliefs, actually the difference between indoctrination and education lies in the pedagogy, notin the particular beliefs. We argue that both natural and social science education must beconcerned with teaching science by doing science - and by science we mean not a body ofknowledge but a method of asking questions and searching for answers. Indoctrinationinvolves intentionally coercing students to adopt certain beliefs without recourse toquestioning or doing science.

1 Note how the word “socialist” has been omitted.33

We should also bear in mind that indoctrination is not as simple as memorising certainanswers to questions. It involves actually believing and acting according to the beliefs.Neither can we be assured that indoctrination is not occurring simply because students areapparently presented with two or more points of view and asked to choose between them. Formeaningful education to occur, students need to be the ones who are questioning andsearching for answers - and perhaps even rejecting all the answers they are presented with.Indoctrination has been defined as “the teaching procedure wherein the student is offered onlyone version of a proposal, and that without supporting reasons” (Moore 1952). But I claimthat this is not necessarily indoctrination - unless students are not allowed to question theproposals, ask alternative questions, and construct their own reasons2 (Thapan 2006). Thus, agood pedagogy may sometimes be to avoid offering students the questions, the answers, orthe reasons. This is not to say that educators should not try to convince students to adoptparticular beliefs. When teachers and/or students carry on authentic discussions they are ofcourse trying to convince each other to change their beliefs. Such discussions should be acentral part of education. Such authentic discussions and argumentation are absent fromindoctrination.

Furthermore I claim that science is historical dialectical materialism, and is the method weshould advocate for learning and teaching social science. By marxism, I mean historicaldialectical materialism (Cornforth 1975, Ch. 13). Here I will argue that social sciencetextbooks should be written from the perspective of a historical dialectical materialist /scientific method. Obviously, this is incompatible with indoctrination.

What would marxist textbooks look like? If we were to use a historical dialectical materialistframework to produce textbooks, we would focus on social production, development, andevolution, just as the NCERT framework also advocates. We would also include emphasis onall sorts of interrelations and interdependencies. But we would not shy away from trying tounderstand essences. However, as marxists, we define essence not in its idealist sense, but tomean a struggle of opposites, which objectively exist but can be revealed only gradually,through observation and social and historical critical analysis. In other words, we (notindividuals) observe and analyse processes in order to understand their basis in inner conflictsin the material world. Thus, the essentialism which marxists use is not the inner thing, but thedialectical process by which ever deeper meanings are revealed. We recognise inherentdiversity (as well as similarity) as being an aspect of the nature of this essence.

I will not here address the question of whether or to what extent the pre-2003 textbooks weremarxist or whether they endangered the nation’s unity or self-esteem. Neither will I hereanalyse whether the NDA textbooks were successful in achieving their stated anti-communistgoal. Rather, I will focus primarily on a few questions regarding the stated and unstated aimsof the present NCERT social science textbooks up to the Class X level. This will lead to aconsideration of the question ‘What is to be done?’ with regard to social science textbooks.

Now again, with the NDA back in power, we are bracing ourselves for expected changes intextbooks and education policies. What will the response of those of us on the left be? Willwe stand up for ‘Communist’ textbooks, or will we just say that textbooks should be‘objective’?

2 ‘Capitalism’ in the NCERT social science textbooks

My interest in the topic of this paper is connected to my work in 2006 as the designer andillustrator of the present NCERT Class X economics textbook, Understanding EconomicDevelopment (NCERT 2006a). I found that the text does not anywhere mention the words‘capitalism’ or ‘capitalist’. It also does not mention ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’. In my wayof thinking, these terms are necessary for an understanding of economic development. Butperhaps the authors had a different idea about the aims of the book. In order to further

2 Yemuna Sunny has used a better definition of indoctrination as occurring when schools are not receptive to students’ questions or opinions (Sunny 2010).

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understand the stated and unstated aims of the book. read the first paragraph of the firstchapter (titled Development):

“The idea of development or progress has always been with us. We have aspirations or desires about what we would like to do and how we would like to live. Similarly, we have ideas about what a country should be like. What are the essential things that we require? Can life be better for all? How should people live together? Can there be more equality? Development involves thinking about these questions and about the ways in which we can work towards achieving these goals. This is a complex task and in this chapter we shall make a beginning at understanding development. You will learn more about these issues ... in higher classes... not just in economics but also in your course in history and political science. This is because the way we live today is influenced by the past. We can’t desire for change without being aware of this. In the same way, it is only through a democratic political process that these hopes and possibilities can be achievedin real life.” (NCERT 2006a: 3, emphasis added)

Since we are ruled by a capitalist economic system, I wondered how we can work together toachieve the development goals without understanding something about capitalism. But then Ithought maybe just the word ‘capitalism’ is not used - maybe another word is used instead. SoI searched for possible alternatives: ‘private enterprise’ or ‘free-enterprise’ sound like nicesubstitutes. But these terms do not appear either. Most important, any description or analysisof the capitalist system works is absent. How then can this textbook help us understanddevelopment, which is the aim stated in the teachers’ notes for the first chapter:“Development has many aspects. The purpose of this chapter is to enable students tounderstand this idea”?

Perhaps the book has an unstated aim which differs from the stated aim. A clue to a possibleunstated aim may be found in the above paragraph: the word ‘democratic’ does appear. Thesedays ‘democracy’ is often used as a euphemism for ‘capitalism’, and I thought maybe that iswhat it means in this textbook as well. But interestingly, this is the one and only occurrence ofthe word in the entire book - apparently just as a normative request to the reader to avoidunlawful action.

I wondered why the word capitalism was not used in an economics textbook. I have been toldby an anonymous educationist in India that “Capitalist” is a “loaded and divisive” word,which “should be avoided (or used with care)”. Is this also the thinking of some of theNCERT textbook writers? I decided to investigate further.

I wondered if maybe a discussion on capitalism has been sequestered into a separatecompartment and is discussed in another textbook. Capitalism is not discussed in any NCERTtextbook from Classes I to VIII. However, the Class VIII economics textbook does define anddiscuss physical capital, fixed capital, working capital and human capital (NCERT 2008). Thecapitalist system, however is not mentioned in any coherent fashion, even without using theword ‘capitalist’. The word or the concept does not even appear in the chapters “Weavers,Iron Smelters and Factory Owners in India”(in the 18th - 20th centuries) or “India afterIndependence”.

The word ‘capitalist’ is mentioned in two of the Class IX books. In the entire Class IXtextbook, Democratic Politics (NCERT 2006b), capitalism is mentioned just once, in passing:“Pinochet made no such claim and openly favoured big capitalists.” But then, this book statesits aim: “This book is about democracy. In this first chapter we see how democracy hasexpanded during the last hundred years to more and more countries in the world. More thanhalf of the independent countries in the world today are democracies.” Perhaps I have adifferent working definition of ‘democracy’ than the one used in this quote. However, in thelast chapter of the book, various social rights, such as the right to food are also mentioned,and the authors do mention that even though a country may be called ‘democratic’,democratic rights may not actually be there in practice. However, I still wonder why all these

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textbooks do not use ‘capitalist’ as a convenient classifier. And I wonder how any textbookcould mention the spread of anything it calls ‘democracy’ without explicitly mentioning thespread of capitalism.

However, capitalism is discussed in more detail in the Class IX history textbook (NCERT2006c). Although it mainly deals with capitalism and nationalism in Europe, it neverthelesscould be very useful for students who try to understand capitalism. In Chapter II, “Socialismin Europe and the Russian Revolution”, the terms, ‘conservatives’, ‘liberals’, ‘radicals’, aredefined and discussed with relation to industrialisation and social change in Europe after theFrench Revolution. Interestingly, the only place (in the entire series of textbooks from Class Ito XII) where capitalism is defined is in the section which defines socialism. The textmentions the position of socialists such as Robert Owen, and then mentions Marx and Engels:

“Marx argued the industrial society was ‘capitalist’. Capitalists owned the capital invested in factories, and the profit of capitalists was produced by workers. The conditions of workers could not improve as long as this profit was accumulated by private capitalists. Workers had to overthrow capitalism and the rule of private property.Marx believed that to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, workers had to construct a radically socialist society where all property was socially controlled. This would be a communist society” (NCERT 2006c: 28).

The Russian Revolution and its aftermath are discussed, but there is not much of analysis orcomparison with capitalism (or even feudalism).

However, the place where the Class IX textbooks come closet to demystifying capitalism inIndia is in Chapter VI, “Peasants and Farmers” of the same book (NCERT 2006c). Part of thischapter focuses on the British opium trade in China and India. European trade in the 15th to17th centuries is an area which is often presented in very confusing ways in western textbooks(because they avoid describing the essence of capitalism). For example, in my textbooks inthe 1960’s in USA, I remember reading about how Columbus had to discover Americabecause Europe needed to get spices from India. It was called trade. But trade meant that theEuropeans loaded some of their things on ships, sailed to India, exchanged the things forspices, and then brought the spices back to Europe. There were two confusing things aboutthis: (1) Did Europeans really use so much spice, and if so why are they (especially theBritish) so famous for having such bland food? (2) What were those things that they weregiving the Indians? In other words, how could the spice trade be so important for Europe? Itwas a mystery.

Now here, in this NCERT chapter I am intrigued to read that England had a problemestablishing trade with China (in the late 18th and early 19 century) because, “England at thistime produced nothing that could be easily sold in China.” The central concepts of capitalistdevelopment are not clearly presented. The word capitalist appears only once, in theintroduction to the chapter: “...what happens when different regions of the world areintegrated with the capitalist world market” (using ‘integrated’ as a euphemism for colonialistimperialism). But it is very interesting that an astute reader could perhaps find a hint of ananswer to the main mystery in this bit about opium for the masses. The text tells how Britaingot rich not by exchanging British goods for Chinese or Indian goods, but through the processof trade itself: buying cheap and selling dear. The wealth actually came from the Chinese andIndian farmers who were not paid the true value of their labour. The text does not state thislatter point. But it does state how the British made Chinese and Indian farmers produceopium, and sell it to them cheaply, and how then the British could make a profit whichallowed them to purchase other Chinese goods. It is presented as if the British were cravingChinese tea (which at least fits in better with the British tea time stereotype). Actually it wasthe profit made by the trading that they were craving (and it did not matter to them whether itwas tea or spices or opium or whether they were causing any social problems). The NCERTtext quotes a letter written by the Chinese Commissioner Lin Ze-xu to Queen Victoria which

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reads (in part): “We find your country is sixty or seventy thousand li from China. Yet thereare barbarian ships that strive to come here for trade for the purpose of making a great profit.The wealth of China is used to profit the barbarians. That is to say, the great profit made bybarbarians is all taken from the rightful share of China.”3 From this brilliant quote, maybestudents can finally begin to understand capitalism. It seems that a textbook author has, byincluding this, subverted the aims of education, at last! However, it is a shame that this ishidden in a corner of a Class IX textbook, and that students are at present denied the right togo to Class IX by the present Right to Education [sic] Act.

Returning to the Class X NCERT textbooks, there is some mention of capitalism in thehistory textbook, India and the Contemporary World - II (NCERT 2007). But there are alsosome places where it should mention capitalism, but does not. For example, in the chapter,“Nationalism in India”, Bhagat Singh is mentioned - but only to say that he was a nationalist(not a freedom fighter?) who thought that “the struggle against the British could not be wonthrough non-violence” , and that he and the HSRA engaged in “a series of dramatic actions indifferent parts of India.” Perhaps we can forgive the exaggerated impression this gives - it isbalanced by the statement that he did not wish to glorify the cult of the bomb. The paragrapheven refers to revolution, contains the quote, “The labourer is the real sustainer of society”,and ends with “Inquilab Zindabad!” But the main message of Bhagat Singh is lost: that itwould be a tragedy to replace British rule by the rule of a few Indian capitalists.

Contrast this with the following extracts from the Eklavya Social Science textbook for ClassVIII:

“One question was: What place would the different religious communities have in the new nation? ... Other questions that arose were: Would it be a nation for the zamindars or a nation for the peasants? Would it be for the mill owners or for the workers? For the adivasis or for the moneylenders? Some people had hopes of India developing on the Gandhian path. Others were making plans for development along capitalist lines. And other people wanted that free India should develop according to socialist ideals.”

“...should people fight only against British rule or also against powerful Indians who were responsible for injustice and inequality in society?” (Eklavya 1993)

The NCERT chapter does not mention such important questions. Nor does it mention theword or the concept of capitalism anywhere in this entire chapter on the independencestruggle.

As another example of avoidance of reference to capitalism, consider the chapter, “TheNationalist Movement in Indo-China”, from the same textbook (NCERT 2007: 26-52). Theentire chapter is remarkably pro-imperialism. For example, there are four paragraphsdescribing the ways in which the French colonisers helped ‘develop’ Vietnam: they broughtcivilisation to backward peoples, they built canals and drained land for farming, theyincreased rice production, they “allowed” [sic] export of rice to the international market, theybuilt infrastructure projects, etc. The only negative aspect mentioned is that the canals were“built mainly with forced labour”, but there is no further elaboration on this point. It is nevermentioned that the people of Vietnam were being forced to work and give up their naturalresources to make their French colonisers wealthy. This suction is followed by a suggestedactivity: “Imagine a conversation between a French coloniser and a Vietnamese labourer inthe canal project. The Frenchman believes he is bringing civilization to backward people andthe Vietnamese labourer argues against it. In pairs act out the conversation they may havehad, using evidence from the text.” However, the only negative evidence from the text is theterm “forced labour”, which is left undefined. This is immediately followed by the statement

3 Obviously the plundered know where the wealth of the merchant comes from: “Merchant's capital, when it holds a position of dominance, stands everywhere for a system of robbery, so that its development among the trading nations of old and modern times is always directly connected with plundering, piracy, kidnapping slaves, and colonial conquest...” (Marx and Engels, 1894: 330)

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at the beginning of the next section: “Everyone agreed that colonies had to serve the interestsof the mother country. But the question was - how?”

Does the chapter anywhere describe the oppression that occurred in Vietnam due toimperialism? It tells about some problems faced by elite school children (being forced to wearwestern clothes, play tennis, speak French, and let French students sit in the front of theclass). It tells about religious oppression (relevant by analogy to Indian communalism atpresent?). It gives the powerful poem written by Ngyuyen Dinh Chieu: “I would rather faceeternal darkness / Than see the faces of traitors. / I would rather see no man / Than encounterone man’s suffering. / I would rather see nothing /Than witness the dismembering of thecountry in decline.” However, the chapter hardly mentions the economic suffering - nor doesit analyse the causes of any suffering which is mentioned. The impression is that the mainconflict was cultural rather than economic. There was a desire for nationalism (for someunmentioned reason). Was imperialism wrong just because the ruler is foreign rather thannative?

You might argue that the reality is too ugly or complicated for young school children tounderstand, so it is okay to focus on school children and religious intolerance. Is that true?There are alternatives. For example, DD Kosambi (1994) has written a few lines that expressthe essence of colonialism:

“The reason for underdevelopment is precisely that our raw materials and our great markets were exploited by the foreigner to his own advantage. Our products were taken away for the price of the cheap labour needed to take them out of the earth, and we paid the highest prices for the finished goods. In a word, the developed countries with very few exceptions are developed precisely because they made profit both ways from us; wewere never paid the actual value of the things taken away. It is our resources that have helped in the development of the great industrialized nations of the world; yet we have to go to the same nations as suppliants, not as people demanding return of what is rightfully our own.”

You may complain that this is an oversimplification. If that is true, then so be it. It will bebetter to have such a text in a social science textbook. But the NCERT textbooks, at least upto Class X, fail to help students come to such a basic understanding. Whose side are they on?

The most problematic part of the NCERT chapter on Vietnam is its very scanty and confuseddescriptions of the War, which gives the impression that it was just about nationalism andunification. The text mentions that the war was “costly to the Vietnamese as well as to theAmericans”, and then goes on to list the precise numbers of Americans who were killed,injured, and totally disabled - afterwards vaguely mentioning that “Civilians died in largenumbers”. Then the chapter ends with the following:

“The widespread questioning of government policy [in the USA] strengthened moves tonegotiate an end to the war. A peace settlement was signed in Paris in January 1974. This ended conflict with the US but fighting between the Saigon regime and the NLF continued. The NLF occupied the residential palace in Saigon on 30 April 1975 and unified Vietnam.” (NCERT 2007: 51)

There is no further discussion. That is how the chapter ends. How dangerous would it havebeen to slip in one truthful sentence stating that the USA lost its war against Vietnam? Wouldthat be too great a blow against capitalism? Did capitalism and imperialism have nothing todo with this entire phase of Vietnamese history? This is almost exactly the same as what iswritten in a Social Studies textbook from USA:

“During the years between 1968 and 1973, 20,000 more American soldiers died. The total American dead in the war stood at around 50,000. / Nixon’s plan ended the war forthe Americans. But the war went on for the Vietnamese. Finally, in 1975, the South

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Vietnamese government fell to its enemies. Thousands of South Vietnamese people left their country. Many of them came to the United States.” (Berg et al. 1979)

It is appalling to find such blatant lies (and sins of omission) in a textbook from the USA, butin an Indian textbook it is outrageous. It leads us to ask whether another unstated aim of theNCERT textbooks was to please Uncle Sam.

3 Objective vs Biased Textbooks

Some might argue that the passages I have quoted, together with the less right-wing passageswhich the textbooks also contain, simply represent the pluralism of opinions and the diversityof points of view which combine to make a good textbook. After all, who are we to say thatany one point of view is any better or worse than any other point of view?

Right-wing critics have stated that the present NCERT textbooks are marxist. A few marxistshave stated that textbooks should be balanced, and that the present NCERT textbooks arebalanced. Some people state that textbooks should be objective. And a number of people pointto Soviet textbooks as examples of what happens when freedom is curtailed.

Therefore, to better understand the problem, we can compare the present NCERT textbooks toSoviet textbooks for about the same aged students. Jakub Basista claims there was an“absolute domination of the study of the past by one political ideology, and one politicalparty” by the “totalitarian” political system of the Soviet Union, which was imposed upon thepeople’s democracies of eastern Europe (Basista 2011)

To prove this point, Basista presents his case study of a set of Soviet textbooks for school anduniversity use (Porszniew and Skazkina 1954)(Galukin 1962); originally published in Russianin 1953, 1958, and republished in Poland in 1962 and 1964). He says:

“...what makes these books differ from western world histories is the methodological approach of the authors. Every chapter brings information and comments on the class struggle and the growing role of the international working class. Thus, chapter six offersa subsection on the class struggle in the USA following the war of independence; chapter eleven talks about the situation of ‘peoples masses’ in Holland; chapter eighteendiscusses the colonial policy of the bourgeois states.”

“...all seen through the prism of class struggle, capitalist and socialist conflict, imperial colonialism and alike.”

I am intrigued. Having been schooled in the USA in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, it soundslike the ‘people’s history’ that we were always craving to hear about, rather than the standardruling class propaganda we were indoctrinated by! Even though in those pre-internet days wedid have access to free libraries, neither the libraries nor the bookshops contained anythinglike this. There was not a single book authored by Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Mao, to saynothing of Stalin!

Upon reading the Basista comment, I was eager to hear more about the books, and find outwhat evidence Basista supplies to support his thesis. But in this I was disappointed. He givesnot a single quote from the books - the only evidence he presents is the number of pages onwhich Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are mentioned. Presumably he is correct that the booksare written from a marxist framework, but I would like to know more. What’s wrong with thebooks?

I could not find those books, but I did happen to find a Soviet history textbook in english,History of the Middle Ages (covering the period from the end of the Roman Empire until themiddle of the 17th century) which was written for 6th Form (higher secondary school)students. I did not find any mention of Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Stalin in it. The first thing thatstrikes me about this book is its pedagogy, which seems to be as good or better than theNCERT textbooks. It is in black and white, but it has lots of diagrams, maps, andillustrations, some of which are copies of original artworks and artefacts from the times being

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discussed. Activities are suggested that involve comparing, analysing, searching forexamples, and interpreting. For example, “Describe the actions of the feudal lords and thedefenders of the town as shown in the picture. What siege weapons are shown here? Which ofthem were also used in ancient times?” After every 2-3 pages the text is broken by a list of“Questions and Homework”, which include many questions that require some analysis andcritical thinking. After every 6-7 pages there is at least one “Document” which provides a firsthand account from the period being discussed. These are also accompanied by questions,usually asking the student to examine them for evidence. For example, here is a quote fromthe summary of a chapter entitled, “The Decline of Feudalism and the Beginning of CapitalistRelations”. It describes trade in the 16th century - and can be compared to the above passagein the NCERT Class IX textbook:

“Spices, gold, and silver flowed from the colonies to Europe. Spanish and Portuguese kings and nobles got the lion’s share of the precious catch. But they spent their gold on various luxuries. The riches looted in colonies passed into the hands of merchants, money-lenders, and owners of big workshops in the most advanced European countries.When the rich people amassed enough money, they opened up new enterprises and increased the output of goods. Geographic discoveries and colonial conquests led to a growth of production in Europe, but for the peoples of America, Asia and Africa they signified the beginning of colonial oppression.”( page 198)

This 19 page chapter includes about 5 pages of pictures: of a water pump (with a technicaldescription of how it works), some workers casting canons in the 16th century (again with atechnical description), a caravel (a type of ship, with a description of its parts), a portrait ofJohann Gutenberg, a map of various sea routes, a flint knife of the Aztecs, decorated withgold and mosaic, “Spanish outrages in the colonies” (based on a quote also given by LasCasas), and a slave market in America.

The document given in this chapter is a three paragraph excerpt from a Spanish soldier’snotes on Mexico. The accompanying questions are: “What Aztec artisans are mentioned in theSpanish soldier’s notes? What proved their high degree of skill? What surprised the Spaniardsin the market in the Aztec capital? What evidence is there that slavery existed in the Aztecstate?”

It seems that overall the books compare favourably to the present NCERT textbooks. I do notsee any evidence for Basista’s statement that the Soviet textbooks “falsified history” (Tavera,Jalagin, and Dilley 2011). Rather, there is a very conscious effort throughout to ask studentsto look for evidence from original sources in order to analyse and understand history - oftenfrom the point of view of the people rather than the kings or conquerors. This is notindoctrination - it is social science.

In fact, this Soviet textbook can be contrasted to an excerpt from the NCERT Class XI historytextbook’s description of the ‘discovery’ of america by Columbus, in which the authors failedto mention that Columbus was a tyrant who murdered and enslaved the people he‘discovered’. In so doing, they express an unstated acceptance of conquest and genocide inthe name of progress. They referred to Columbus’ ‘achievement’, and wrote that it is curiousthat he is not more highly commemorated than he is in USA. (NCERT 2006d: 176).

However, I doubt that this statement by the NCERT authors (which is shocking to me) is theresult of their considered reaction to the people who condemn Columbus based on thevoluminous evidence from first-hand accounts, including diaries by Columbus himself. Idoubt that they realise that some people strongly object to calling him a discoverer orcelebrating ‘Columbus Day’ as a national holiday in USA. (Just the other day my mother,living in USA, exclaimed how unbelievable and shameful it is that this holiday is stillofficially celebrated!) Later in the same textbook the authors do mention some of the horrorsof the european conquest of the americas. But the words “genocide” and “murder” are

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completely absent. The word “killed” only occurs once, with reference to the killing ofSpaniards and their allies by Aztecs.

This goes to show that ideologies are important, and that we all need to be more careful inanalysing our own points of view and how they are or are not reflected in the textbooks weproduce. The problem is not that textbooks are biased - the problem is that they have thewrong bias.

In this connection, it is worthwhile to recall what Sumanta Banerjee wrote about the NCERTtextbook controversy of 1978:

In fact, most of the Marxist and Left-liberal historians of various hues in our country have ignored the interests of the basic classes in Indian society. While the traditional school of historians looked for roots of conflicts in the religious tendencies of kings and emperors, the Marxists and liberals sought Western norms like beliefs in bourgeois democracy, humanism and internationalism as criteria for judging historical characters as "progressives". Their radicalism was transparently a radicalism within their class — amiddle class nurtured more on Bentham and Mill than Karl Marx. Although they occasionally took the side of the peasantry and the working class, they seldom took up aproletarian stand-point. Nothing could be more illustrative of this lacuna than the fact trim during the last half a century of the Communist movement in India, till very recently few Marxist historians deigned to write a history of the peasant movements in India, although the peasantry played a consistently anti-imperialist and anti-feudal role during the entire period of British rule.

What the Hindu communal lobby attacks as 'Marxist distortion' of Indian history today is therefore far removed from Marxism. The views expressed in the controversial text-books which have triggered the current debate can at best be described as an interpretation of Indian history in the light of Western liberal values with stress on such factors as parliamentary democracy, bourgeois humanism and a secular approach. ...

The inability of the Marxist historians and intellectuals to move beyond bourgeoise liberalism and adopt a dialectical materialist approach, has had grave consequences for the Indian Leftist movement in general. The brand of liberalism that we have learnt from the West plays the same part in the fascination of our intellectuals as the official 'non-violence' of the Indian ruling classes does in their offensive against the working people. (Banerjee 1978)

4 What is to be done?

I have tried to show the folly of trying to produce ‘objective’ social science textbooks. Now Iwill relate some of my own experiences in trying to illustrate a textbook in a way which Iadmit is non-objective.

Many Indian textbooks are written in a great rush, with no time to test out chapters or get veryextensive feedback before publishing and distributing. The illustrations are usually made in aneven greater rush. Thus, I was asked to add all illustrations and complete the layout for theClass X economics textbook (NCERT 2006a) of almost 100 pages within a matter days (itended up taking 3-4 weeks). I had some problems with the text. Despite the severe timelimitations, as the illustrator of this book, I therefore tried to subvert the text slightly.

I was bothered that this text did not mention what I consider to be the central questions ofeconomics, or economic development, which are, “Where does wealth come from?” and“Why are there rich and poor?”

The only hint of these unstated questions is that in order to understand the difference between‘developed’ and undeveloped’ countries, the chapter mentions that development can beindicated by summing up all the individual incomes and then dividing by the total number ofpeople in a country. This gives us the average income (or per-capita income) of a country. Of

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course, this still does not answer the question of where these ‘incomes’ come from in the firstplace. An accompanying text box shows how two hypothetical countries with the sameaverage income can have very different income distributions. For this, the illustration whichwas suggested to me was: “Give a sketch showing 7-8 and five persons. One person is spreadon 4-5 chairs, and other 4 persons are crowded around 2 chairs. In the second part of thesketch, show five persons sharing 4 chairs with the caption ‘Which one is more developed?’”

I tried to slightly subvert the text by drawing the following illustration, with the captions andtitles I wrote myself:

Figure 1: (NCERT 2006a: 9)

By ‘subvert’, I mean I tried to give the students a better hint regarding the missing question,“Where does wealth come from?” and its answer. The answer is, wealth comes from thelabour of the people who make the chairs. (It was difficult for me to decide how many chairsand how many people to draw in each case, and I hope the readers will question this aspect aswell.) The surprising thing for me was that my illustration was not removed from the textbook- perhaps due to the rush, or perhaps due to a sort of liberalism which allows a certain amountof ‘free speech’, or perhaps due to a post-modernist belief that any opinion is just as good asany other opinion, or perhaps because in the end at least a few of the authors agreed with me.

In the entire chapter on development, the questions of WHY some places are more developedthan others and WHY some people are rich and others are poor are neither asked noranswered. There is one question which is somewhat related, though. There is a corner on“Sustainability of Development” in which it is stated that “a number of scientists have beenwarning that the present type, and levels, of development are not sustainable.” The decrease ingroundwater levels is mentioned for example as a result of unsustainable development. Andhere the question of WHY the groundwater level is decreasing is asked - and answered. Theanswer is: “Nearly one-third of the country is overusing their groundwater reserves.” Thus,we are left with a reason for less development: overuse of natural resources. It sounds rathersimilar to the usual population explosion excuse for inequitable distribution. Or perhaps thesolution is to save water by turning off the tap when you are brushing your teeth? The deeperreasons are not explored (apparently they are hidden out of sight, deep underneath the fallenground water).

Then, on the next page, there is another example, this time of a non-renewable naturalresource - crude oil. In this case, it is pointed out that some countries, such as India and USAdo not have enough stocks of their own. The implication is that maybe stocks of naturalresources could be a cause of development. The text says, “Countries like India depend onimporting oil from abroad because they do not have enough stocks of their own. If prices ofoil increase this becomes a burden for everyone. There are countries like USA which havelow reserves and hence want to secure oil through military or economic power.” Theimplication is perhaps that compared to USA, India remains less developed because it doesnot have enough military or economic power. But, the question that remains unstated andunanswered is WHY and WHERE does military and economic power come from?

As the illustrator, I spotted another way to address the unstated question of where wealthcomes from. I inserted the illustration shown in Figure 2(a) in the chapter on “Sectors of

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Economic Activities”. However, this was apparently uncalled for. It was replaced by Figure2(b). The Capitalist is now left out of the picture.

Figure 2(a) Figure 2(b) (NCERT 2006a: 22)

Figure 3 shows another illustration I tried to sneak in, and how it was cleansed beforepublication. Actually, I am not at all unhappy with the final versions of the illustrations. Inever expected that any of these examples would make it to the press. I aware of both thestated and the unstated aims of education, and I can see the limitations.

However, through this experience, I have learned that some of the demotivation for presentingan anti-capitalist point of view comes not from right-wing people who really believe that it iswrong. It comes even from those of us on the left. We feel that the textbooks will be rejectedif we ‘go too far’. I also doubted whether I should risk submitting some of these illustrations.

Figure 3(a) Figure 3(b) (NCERT 2006a: 67)

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Finally, Figure 4 shows another rejected illustration.

Figure (4)

It is interesting to see how the text also developed as it went through some revisions. Forexample, here is the first version of the first sentence of Chapter 6 “Globalisation”:

“As consumers in today's world, we have today a far greater access to the world market of goods and services than it was ever thought possible.”

In the final version this sentence became:

“As consumers in today’s world, some of us have a wide choice of goods and services before us.”

This is an example of how as textbook writers and illustrators, our subjective existence mayinfluence our work - and how through feedback, analysis and self-criticism we canpurposively modify our stance. However, most likely such correction depends on demandsraised from oppressed sections, and is unlikely to be easily accepted in a governmenttextbook.

5 Conclusion: The aims of education

In this paper I have analysed some examples from the present NCERT social sciencetextbooks in order to try to understand what the stated and unstated learning objectives maybe. I have done this mainly through an analysis of the use - and absence - of the word‘capitalism’. But the question remains, why did the NCERT authors shy away frompresenting a clear idea of what capitalism is?

Unstated aims do not necessarily exist because anyone is purposely trying to be deceptive.Some unstated aims may be forced upon authors, illustrators, and policy makers by theobjective situation. We all have points of view which depend on our experience and positionsin history and in society. We may or may not be very aware of our own points of view, andthere are many reasons why it may be difficult to become more self-aware.

As India stoops in obeisance to US imperialism, perhaps it is not surprising that words such as‘capitalism’ occasionally get dropped from the school syllabus. This word has for long beenan unstated, dirty word in the USA. In 2010 the Texas Board of Education (which is agovernment body that has considerable power over textbooks used throughout the USA)voted (democratically?) to delete the word “capitalism” from textbooks, and instead use theterm “free-enterprise system” (McKinley 2010). Will this also become the stated practice inIndian textbooks?

We suspect that the reluctance to mention capitalism in textbooks may be because of a(conscious or unconscious) belief (or maybe wishful thinking) among some powerful peoplethat capitalism is a universal and everlasting condition of the human society. To them, it is aconstant - a sort of ‘background condition’, invisible to most empirical analyses even thoughit is the foundation of society (Foster, Clark, and York 2010).

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Additional evidence that the present NCERT textbooks are aligned with capitalism, andagainst communism is shown in statements indicating that globalisation is inevitable andgenerally agreeable. As stated in the Class X economics textbook: “Since globalisation is nowa reality, the question is how to make globalisation more fair?[sic]” (NCERT 2006a).

As we see it, globalisation has basically the same character as imperialism and colonialism.The similarity presents a problem for textbook authors: how can they present historical eventssuch as the Indian independence movement in a positive light if its purpose was to endimperialism? If imperialism is similar to globalisation, and globalisation is not to bequestioned, then where are we? This contradiction also arises in the chapter on Vietnam in theNCERT Class X history textbook. The authors attempted to resolve these contradictions byredefining such struggles as being struggles for nationalism or unification, rather than as anti-imperialist or even anti-feudalism. For example, it is very sad to see the textbook taking sideswith the imperialist power, and not even acknowledging that Vietnam defeated the USA inthe war.

And what are the stated aims of social science education? What do we state in our liberal“aims of education” documents?

The policy documents state that education should aim for equity, self-knowledge, and forcreating links between the school, the home, and the community - but that these aims will bemeaningless unless the process of education can “free itself from the shackles of all kinds ofexploitation and injustice (e.g., poverty, gender discrimination, caste and communal bias),which prevent our children from being part of the process” (NCERT 2006e)4. Needless to say,one wonders how education can give rise to equity if equity is needed in order to give rise toeducation. However, equity is at least stated to be intended.

Those are some of the stated aims. But what are the unstated aims of social science education?

If we state the unstated, taking a positive view of the aims of education, we recognise that thepresent educational situation in the country is actually quite robust5 and has been verysuccessful in facilitating the development of capitalist social order, and therefore radicalchanges - or perhaps even moderate changes - are not required. The present system aims tomaintain the status-quo6.

Some educationists act against education, but without so stating, or even being aware that thisis what they are doing. But sometimes the unstated almost gets stated, as when Lant Pritchett,a researcher from MIT, Harvard, and the World Bank writes a lengthy report with the statedthesis: “Cross-national data show no association between increases in human capitalattributable to the rising educational attainment of the labour force and the rate of growth ofoutput per worker. This implies that the association of educational capital growth withconventional measures of total factor production is large, strongly statistically significant, andnegative” (Pritchett 2001). His report provides governments with a rationalisation forspending less on education. However, he concludes by stating that he has not stated what hehas stated: “None of the arguments in this article suggest that governments should invest lessin basic schooling, for many reasons. For one thing, ... basic education is a merit good, so thatits provision is not and need not be justified on economic grounds.... To deny a child aneducation because of a small expected economic growth impact would be a moral travesty. ...The implication, therefore, of a poor past aggregate payoff from increased cognitive skills in a

4Another example: “Seeking guidance from the Constitutional vision of India as a secular, egalitarian and pluralistic society, founded on the values of social justice and equality, certain broad aims of education have been identified in this document.”(NCERT 2005) 5 Indications of the success of the education system are many. A highly educated class of intellectuals have been produced. India has long been known to churn out students who complete their degrees in USA and other developed countries, and go on to become successful professionals, and now many successful professionals are even completing their studies within India.6 By “maintenance of status-quo”, we mean the maintenance of the capitalist system in which the majority do not get paid thetrue value of their labour, but work to support the accumulation of wealth by a small minority. That capitalism in India has thrived can be measured by the increase in GDP, which has occurred despite the abysmally low rate of government spending on education.

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perverse policy environment is not "don't educate," but rather "reform now so thatinvestments (past and present) in cognitive skills will pay off." Despite his doublespeak, it isclear that his concern is with the monetary “pay off”. It is clear that “good” means“commodity”, and that education is a commodity is unquestionable. What he means by“reform” is unstated, but he implies that it does not mean spending more on education.

In general, education is encouraged or allowed only if it aligns itself with, facilitates, and aimsnot to endanger the overall capitalist social order. A general aim of education at present(usually unstated) is to educate students in order to facilitate their conformation andintegration into the present social system. The unstated aim of not mentioning capitalism is tokeep students from realising that there is any alternative to capitalism. According to thisideology, the hope is that if capitalism remains ununderstood and unanalysed, it may not bequestioned. What occurs is indoctrination rather than education.

But there is another problem: given the current texts and pedagogy, how is this aim evenpossible? We know that children are not empty vessels that can be filled with certainsocial/political beliefs that are written in textbooks. Students do not simply imbibe and decodethe words, understand the language and its intended meanings, believe them (or change theirbeliefs in accordance with the intended meanings), and begin to act according to these beliefs.

Social science education is to a large extent based on the prescribed school texts, mediated bycertain pedagogical practices. The texts and the practices are the result of complexinteractions between the textbook authors, teachers, students, parents, the stated curriculum,educational policies, and the stated and unstated aims. What students actually learn is ofcourse another question.

Thus we wonder, when students read the NCERT textbooks, do they become aware ofconflicts which may exist between the text and their own understandings which are based ontheir real-life experiences?

Alternatively, education may have the underlying aim of educating students so that they “dealcritically and creatively with reality and discover how to purposively participate in thetransformation of their world” (Freire 1968). We align ourselves with this alternative goal ofeducation - but we realise that it will entail a struggle and a certain amount of subversiveaction on our part. In today’s world, obviously education for conformation predominates.

Even if we are prevented from making the sorts of textbooks which we believe are pro-peopleand pedagogically sensible, can a few of us at least subversively undermine the text byinserting a few passages or illustrations which will help students to ask questions?

In writing social science textbooks there is both intentional and unintentional deception,which is not always easy to recognise, and impossible to avoid. Even if textbooks are writtenby a team of authors purposely chosen to represent a range of differing points of view, certainpoints of view will inevitably be left out or deemphasized. Furthermore, textbooks areexpected (consciously or unconsciously) to be inline with the ideology of the government orcorporations who publish them.

It will be well for those of us who make textbooks to realise that we have particular points ofview, to be aware of our own points of view, and to analyse how our points of view influencethe textbooks we produce. It is our responsibility to try to understand ourselves, question ourbeliefs, and consciously act.

Of course, a government in the present system cannot be expected to produce textbooks whichare written from the point of view of the oppressed. Those of us who see the need musttherefore do what we can to subvert the system in order to at least introduce a few seeds forsubversive action into a few textbooks and schools. Subversive action may include askingquestions which are usually not asked, observing things/processes which those in powerwould rather not see, and looking for answers through critical analysis, experimentation,observation, and communication, rather than by unquestioned belief.

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